No new drug approvals or safety communications affecting emergency practice today.
The American College of Emergency Physicians has approved multidisciplinary Delphi consensus guidelines on unscheduled procedural sedation, published in two parts: principles, oversight and quality monitoring, and clinical practice.
The distinction the guidelines rest on is worth stating plainly, because it is the source of most of the friction around this topic. Unscheduled procedural sedation is not theatre anaesthesia performed elsewhere. The patient is unfasted, the indication is urgent, the operator is usually the person who will also perform the procedure, and the governance frameworks written for elective sedation do not transfer cleanly. Guidance written specifically for the unscheduled setting is more useful than guidance adapted from the scheduled one.
Note what this is: ACEP policy, approved by its board, and explicitly not subject to the journal's peer review. That is not a criticism — professional policy carries its own kind of authority — but it is a different kind of document from a systematic review, and worth reading as such.
- No new approvals, recalls or safety communications for emergency medicine today
- Two parts: oversight and quality monitoring, then clinical practice
- Written for the unscheduled setting rather than adapted from elective sedation
- ACEP policy, explicitly not peer reviewed by the journal that carries it
- Likely to become the standard departmental sedation policies are judged against
The statistics, in plain English
Consensus guidelines report agreement rather than an effect estimate, and their strength depends on the breadth of who was consulted and whether dissent was recorded rather than smoothed over. A professional body's policy also carries weight beyond its evidence: it tends to become the benchmark a later complaint or inquiry is measured against.
Read the rest in the app
You have read your two free briefings this month. The app carries all 27 specialties, every morning, free — and this finding is waiting in it.
Scan to keep reading on your phone. No account needed to start.
Tomorrow morning, before your first patient
One edition a day for emergency & critical care, written by the desk, every claim tied to its paper. Six minutes.
Get the app — free